Professional hopes and goals

My hope for children and families with diverse backgrounds is that people can learn to appreciate differences in other people. I hope we can learn that these differences are what make us all the unique individuals. We all are unique individuals and should gain knowledge about things we don't understand or don't know anything about. Using these approaches to differences can help build a positive outlook on diversity. It's like a fruit salad, meaning each individual has their own unique flavor or  fruit to put in the salad. Overall, its flavor is enhanced when different fruits are added to complete the salad, no one looses who they are but helps make the salad better.

My goal is that we as Early Childhood professionals continue to educate ourselves and others on the importance of equity and social justice. We have to advocate to others the importance of showing equity to any family despite their culture because our children should be our first priority.

To all my colleagues, thanks for your support on the blogs and discussion boards. Your personal comments, professional advice, and experiences have given me more insight to becoming a better advocate for young children and their families. Also keep up the good work and God bless you all in our journey to obtaining our Master's degree.

Supporting a Nepal Family

The family's origin would be Nepal. Five ways I would prepare myself to be culturally responsive would be to do the following:
Gain background knowledge on their country of origin
Learn some linguistics to use for basic communication
Prepare documents needed in home language
Make the child care environment open to diverse families
Make sure other staff meet and greet family in a non invasive manner

I hope doing these things will help the.family understand we are open to diversity and providing their child with a successful school year.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

A memory of an incident I can recall from a fictional television show is from “The Wayans Bros.” I remember an episode where the oldest brother Shawn Wayans was looking for a new job and was hired for the position. Later, in the episode it was revealed that he was only hired to maintain a particular status quot of having another race in the office other than white. It was hard on this character because he was never allowed an opportunity to express his true work skills, but only hired to make sure the company had an African American person in the workplace. For this reason, prejudice and racialism evolved and diminished equity amongst equal rights for Shawn in the company. I felt a sense of sorrow for the character because he was not given an equal opportunity to show what he could do for the company. For this incident to be an opportunity for greater equity the boss/manager and the company itself would have to change its way of thinking and understand that there are qualified people of various colors that could do this job.